you know what i desperately want in elain’s book?
i would love to see a real conversation between her and nesta. one where you can see the remnants of nesta’s protective instincts towards elain, the almost motherly love and fear she has surrounding elain’s wellbeing and the terrible thought that what if elain isn’t ok? what if she’s still that girl who emerged from the cauldron and if nesta looks away for one instant, she’ll be gone?
and i want elain to crack and bleed and boil over and confess what’s she’s been harboring inside since the moment she turned fae. i have a speculation that with the pressure of the war with hybern and then nesta’s own mental health battle, that elain felt she had no choice but to bury her feelings because just as feyre said to rhys “we have to help one sister before the next”. that helping feyre through her pregnancy and saving nesta became so important that elain was worried her own issues would only burden the others.
and i feel like elain carries a self loathing inside similar to nesta and feyre. that she feels like a mistake the cauldron spit out. her body doesn’t react the way she expects and it isn’t strong and powerful in the traditional warrior sense that feyre and nesta’s are. that her mind isn’t even truly her own anymore and she knows that others think that she’s odd. she knows they think “elain is elain”. she knows they didn’t understand her and it was all too easy to assume she had lost her mind because she didn’t carry the visible inner strength that the others did.
and if her whole life she was conditioned to believe her only strength was her beauty and then to be rejected by graysen, not only the man she loved but a symbolic representation of humanity and the societal expectations that her birth defined her by? how else is she supposed to feel but like a mistake? like something wrong? and to have a mate that she can feel like an anchor on her heart just weighing her down with HIS expectations of the kind of mate he wants and she can’t even live up to that? she isn’t jesminda, she isn’t this fiery woman and once again, even if she were to accept the bond, she knows lucien would just feel shackled to her. bound by his obligations to his friendship with feyre, his duties to the night court, and the expectations of the bond. but if she says no to the bond, she also knows that this feeling of failure and driftlessness would only worsen. that while she would have support from her family and court, she would feel guilt by letting them down. by not being able to do one thing to help her court like all the others. that she would continue to exist like a parasite that is leeching off them with no contributions
and so what other choice is there expect to smile, pretend to be fine, and avoid making a decision? putting off the decision until she cracks. and maybe that would have worked if she had one thing, one person that saw her. one person she didn’t feel guilty about letting see her because they had no prior expectations of her. one person who seemed to genuinely enjoy being around her and reassured her of her place. only to have that person now also tell her that their growing relationship was a mistake
while i really don’t think the bonus chapter is a big deal, i think the feelings of unworthiness that it only reinforces in elain are a big deal. i’m sure there will be some other breaking point scene in the book that also leads her to the conclusion that she has failed in some way, but im just using the bonus chapter as an example right now because that’s all i have.
but i would love to see her just confess these feelings to nesta. to finally be honest with her sister who used to know her better than anyone and vise versa. for nesta to see that just as elain’s expectations of her dragged her down, so do nesta’s of elain. to use this moment to begin to rebuild their relationship while also kickstarting elain’s journey of growth and acceptance
and warning for mentions of self harm, but i also can’t help but think that elain feels so wound tight and dreaming of “ivy that’s choking her” that some of her behaviors could be reminiscent of sh. that her decision to garden without gloves is both a rejection of her coddled position, of the mating bond, but is also a release to let her feel something. perhaps even a punishment.
all of this to say is i’m just so excited to get in her head and i think it will be so cathartic to read about. obviously none of these negative feelings are how i view elain but are ones that i just suspect will be themes in her story as a member of the people pleaser community (to which i am also a member). elain 2026 let’s go